Menu

Icy-Looking Glass Roof Tiles Put the Chill on High Heating Bills

Swedish Company SolTech Energy offers a revolutionary way to create a net zero home. The company’s award-winning design and concept combines an attractive design with essential functions for clean and sustainable energy. SolTech Energy has developed a unique home heating system contained within innovative roofing tiles made out of ordinary transparent glass.

The system is capable of generating around 350 kWh heat per square meter of roof, depending on the climate, roof angle and house direction.

Science behind: The tiles, made from ordinary glass, allow the sun to heat air that is then used to heat the house. The tiles are installed on top of a black nylon canvas and absorber modules are installed underneath the glass tiles, which harvest the energy from the sun. The solar energy that is generated is accumulated in a specific storage tank which is connected to the building’s central heating system.

The best part is that it helps in cutting the energy costs throughout the year, during dark winter days as well as night time, because of its capacity to store heat in the isolating layers of air under the canvas.

Very flexible system: This system works with both air-based and water-based heating systems. The system can be easily integrated with all heating systems like district heating, geothermal heating, air to water heat pumps, pellets, wood, oil or electric boiler.

The company developed these tiles in collaboration with the Swedish glass mill Orrefors. Today, they are producing these tiles in Portugal using the same Swedish design.

Nidhi Goyal

Nidhi is a gold medalist Post Graduate in Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences. You can also find Nidhi on Google+.